Russia’s Vladimir Putin Says Worldwide Tensions Might Worsen Due to COVID Pandemic

Russia’s Vladimir Putin Says Worldwide Tensions Might Worsen Due to COVID Pandemic

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Wednesday that the coronavirus pandemic has contributed to worsening global tensions."The coronavirus pandemic has become a major challenge to mankind, and it has accelerated structural changes, the preconditions for which were already in place," Putin said during a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum."We have every reason to believe that the tensions might be aggravated even further," he continued, citing experts who compared the current state of global affairs to the late 1920s and early 1930s.Putin added that parallels could be drawn between the past and present in terms of the scale of what he called systemic "challenges and potential threats."Russian President Vladimir Putin is shown above speaking on the screen during his annual press conference on December 17, 2020 in Moscow. At the recent World Economic Forum, Putin said that domestic political processes were becoming more violent and that "all of this cannot but impact international relations, making them less stable and predictable."

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Putin then noted that the pandemic has increased social stratification, which he said, "causes a sharp polarization in public opinion" between right- and left-wing radicalism.He also said that domestic political processes were becoming more violent."All